The Help By Kathryn Stockett

Margaret Mead said "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  Three such people, Aibileen, Minnie, and Skeeter, conspire to change their corner of the world by revealing what it is like to be a black maid working for a white woman in Jackson Mississippi in 1962.

Aibileen is a genteel black maid, raising her 17^th white child in the Leefolt household. She has returned to work after a grieving for her son who was killed in an industrial accident.  Minnie, plump, sassy, and angry is Aibileen’s closest friend.  She’s known for her sharp tongue and her cooking; chocolate pie is her specialty as well her weapon.  Recently fired and blacklisted by Hilly, the pretentious leader of the Junior League, she takes a job with a Jackson newcomer.  Skeeter, who Aibileen says is “the kind that speak to the help,” is a raw-boned, middle-class, 22 year old graduate of Ole Miss, back in town and working for the local paper.  She tries to coerce the fearful maids into talking about “what you get paid, how they treat you, the bathrooms, the babies, all the things you’ve seen, good and bad”   She wants them to talk about life with the white ladies, or as one reviewer put it, “the pure, down and out bitchery of the white ladies who become dissatisfied with their maids and proceed to ruin their lives.”  Reluctantly, Aibileen and Minnie steal away and tell their stories.  Skeeter writes the book. 

The Help, rejected by 45 literary agents before being picked up by Penguin Books, has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for two years and has sold 3 million copies. It is on my own list of “favorite books of all-time.”  I found it to be funny, shocking, compassionate, and highly readable.  With lovable heroines and despicable villains, it is sure to be a blockbuster movie as well.  The Help, the movie, will be released on August 12^th.   Be sure to get a copy of the book to read before then.  And join the MUSE group on June 7^th at 6:30 in the Main Building of Kent State to talk about the experience.  Chocolate pie, although Minnie’s recipe will NOT be used, will be served.  (Susan Weaver is director of library services at Kent, East Liverpool.  Contact her at sweaver@kent.edu)